Plus Size Soccer Jerseys

Some things are easy to buy online. A few times in the past month I’ve gone looking for a soccer jersey for any of the many football (soccer to my fellow Americans) team I follow. Three futile hours later, I am considering changing which football I follow since stores can carry appropriately sized apparel for it. I’m someone who wears a fairly rare to find size of 3XLT. (Or 4XL when tall is not an option. Or sometimes 3XL for teeshirts, but that usually means exposed back when I sit.)

It annoys me to find a design I like for a reasonable price only to discover there is no size available to me. In bricks and mortar stores, it means never returning until I hear they have a “Big and Tall” section hidden somewhere not obvious.

Here is a place where the Long Tail falls down. According to it, online stores, with their enormous warehouses can better afford to carry a more broad selection of less frequently selling items. They give us more choice. Therefore, it means I ought to find more choice online. For things not in my size, this is true. There is tons of choice. The same stores in a mall who carry clothing in the right sizes seem perfectly capable of offering a wider selection. Yet, an online store like Amazon can’t make it easy for me to find clothing that fits?

My main beef with Worldsoccershop.com is the lack of product in a size I can wear. (The one jersey would make me a Chelsea supporter.) They do get a couple things right.

Quality search: I can put 4xl in the search and get back items with a size of 4xl. All these sites have a search. However, for many sites, size doesn’t appear to be a relevant word. The term “4XL” lands items with “XL” in the name. Useless!

Narrow results by size: Brand, price, and seller are options Amazon offers for narrowing the search to more useful options. How is size not important enough to include? Useless!

Ultimately, I guess not enough people my size have enough interest in soccer jerseys. They end up American football or basketball or baseball fans which have clothes large enough for me. Maybe I should switch sports allegiances? It would help my political allegiances.

8 thoughts on “Plus Size Soccer Jerseys”

Im in the same boat u are in my friend, im 6’6 300lbs and a big AC Milan fan. But can never find a jersey in my size, i dont know if its the manufacturers fault or the stores that 4XL and above sizes arent available. I mean wat makes people think that the only people that want a jersey is someone that 5’7 160lbs? i mean come on, dont u think that there are some big people out there that would like to wear theyre teams colors?

I am constantly wondering about this topic. Surely there are fat people in England? King George comes to mind. The ghost of Ricky Gervais past?

I’m a big Manchester City fan born and raised in NY. Big, in this instance, is a word with multiple intended meanings.

On the “plus” side, as the light blue empire grows with dollars and titles, one would think that city shirts will come with more and more variables. The chief problem though returns to the fact that soccer shirts are so thin and elastic, likely a result of their being made for soccer players. I got an official Joey Barton jersey several years ago that came in 2xl and does little more than paint my man boobs light blue and descend past my belly button.

The search term “xxxxl” yields 0 results on World Soccer Shop. Adding jersey to the search yields 6939 results, but the ones on the first page are “Youth X Large” which is waaaay too small.

WSS has a size filter and the options are better now (2012) than when I originally posted this (2010). Search for “England” and of the available sizes, the largest are 3XL and 56. The only jersey under 3XL is a Bayern Munich Muller one (to celebrate 2 goals against England). Under 56, there are the home, away, keeper, and named player shirts.

This is apparently because Umbro uses a different size value than Nike or Adidas. Yay, it gets MORE complicated.

its 2016 and still cant find a viable option as well. i can find some knockoff jerseys on aliexpress but they are 2 sizes too smaill (found out the hard way) i am so damn annoyed. why cant big and tall fellas wear the same kits as there skinnier buddies. its depressing.